In warm weather, it is pleasant to sit on the patio. Plus you can bring your dog there.

The small, nicely decorated tasting room was almost full when we got there at 1:30, so we were concerned that we hadn’t made a reservation. But the hostess showed us to a small table made from a wine barrel topped by glass, with high stools for seats. By the time we left an hour later, every seat was taken, including the stools at the bar. Well, there was music, by a pleasant duo called The Second Hands, and weekends are starting to get more crowded on the North Fork, but we were underwhelmed by the wines.

I remembered that the last time we had been there we had sat outside on the lovely patio overlooking rural Oregon Road, with one of my brothers and his wife, and my brother had characterized the merlot as “Kool-Ade wine.” Still not an unjust description.

By the time we left, all the seats were taken.

The crowd seemed to skew slightly older than some other wineries, with larger groups sitting on comfortable couches around coffee tables. Many people were getting snacks from the somewhat upscale menu of cheeses and meats and other nibbles. A large party occupied a separate room, where they seemed to be getting some sort of wine tutorial or private tasting.

The menu offers three options: four whites for $12, four reds for $15, or six Estate wines for $20. As we perused the list, we noted that the white and red options included a number of the lower-priced Bridge Lane wines, which we had tasted at Lieb’s more casual tasting room on Cox Neck Road back in September, so we opted to share an Estate flight. There’s also a list of higher priced wines only available as single tastes or glasses.

Our server brought us all six tastes on small round trays, clearly labeled as to variety and order of tasting, and gave a quick, almost robotic run through of their characteristics. Though she checked back on us at regular intervals, my husband felt the lack of those wine discussions we so enjoy having. One nice touch—they bring to each table a carafe of water and glasses, useful for palate cleansing.

Nice touch–fresh flowers on the tables.

(Note: no outside food or drink. Dogs are allowed on the outside patio, but not inside.)

2013 Estate Sparkling Pinot Blanc $38

It’s always nice to start with a sparkling wine, since it sets a festive tone. Our server informed us that it was “fermented in the bottle, in the traditional method.” It was served so cold that at first we could barely taste it, so by the time it warmed up the nice little bubbles had mostly dissipated. I don’t know whether the bottle had been open for a while, or whether the bubbles just don’t have much staying power. The wine smells of metal and honeysuckle, with tastes of roasted pear, butterscotch or toast, and minerals. It’s dry, so could go with charcuterie, but not tasty enough to go on its own for a toast.

2018 Estate Pinot Blanc $22

This is our signature grape, our server announced. I can see why. This is a nice, very drinkable white. The aroma I described as a combination of orange blossoms and asparagus is characterized in the tasting notes as lemon blossom. Again, this is a dry wine, with some light citrus taste plus maybe gooseberries and, according to my tasting buddy, celery. Also some minerality. It could be good with lobster or seafood in a cream sauce.

2018 Estate Chardonnay $24

Our server described this one as “70% oaked, with nice creaminess” so I was not looking forward to it, but the tasting notes on the tray said “neutral oak.” Whew. It was pretty strongly citrusy for an oaked chard, with aromas of pencil shavings (cedar, they say) and a touch of cat pee. The notes also said melon, but I would say unripe melon. Definitely not the butterscotchiness you sometimes get with oaked chards. My husband liked it the best of the three, but I was not as pleased with it. He thought it would go well with oysters, while I was thinking veal chops (though I’ve pretty much stopped eating veal).

Note the schedule of music events: though we were underwhelmed by the wines, it is still a nice place to sit and hear music.

2017 Estate Merlot $30

This is the wine my brother described as “Kool-Ade.” You get the merlot cherry aroma and taste, plus some nutmeg, but it is a soft, tanninless red with a flavor that evanesces. The notes call it medium bodied, but I would say light.

We enjoyed the music of The Second Hand.

2017 Estate Cabernet Franc $35

I would also call the cab light-bodied, with very slight tannins. The aroma is slightly funky, with some scent of plums. I described the taste as raspberry, but my pal said he would agree only if I twisted his arm and held him down. Ouch.

2017 Estate Petit Verdot $35

As we hear at every NoFo winery that makes a petit verdot, we are told that this grape is most often used in blends, where it lends a nice rich color. I happen to often like petit verdots, and this one is no exception. In fact, I like it the best of the wines we tasted. It has a lovely fruity aroma, and, though dry, has tastes of sweet dark fruits. Again, short on tannins. Anti-tannic, opines my husband. However, if we were going to stay and have a glass of wine while listening to the music, this is the wine I would get. Would it stand up to a steak? I don’t think so.

Cans of Bridge Lane wines are available for purchase.

I almost missed the small display of local art.

Reasons to visit: nice location on rural Oregon Road, with a pleasant outdoor space in warm weather and a classy tasting room; good menu of snacks; the Pinot Blanc and the Petit Verdot; you can also buy the reasonably priced Bridge Lane wines there, available in cans as well as bottles, etc.

As our server explained a couple of times, the winemaker at Lenz likes the French style; hence their pinot gris, not pinot grigio, for example. But they recently changed their winemaker, so it will be interesting to check back in a couple of years and see if the wines are any different.

The vines are still bare, but we’ve seen a few signs of spring on the North Fork: robins on the lawn, rolled up snow fences in the fields, signs promising to open soon.

On this gray, drizzly late March day there was only one other group at the winery, so we were able to have a nice chat with the very well-informed server, who seemed to have a real appreciation for the wines. Because she had to open fresh bottles for us, she carefully sniffed a small portion of each one before she poured, actually rejecting one bottle as not quite right.

The attractively barn-like tasting room has plenty of room for groups, and a small selection of wine-themed gifts, as well as local art for purchase. They offer a Catapano cheese tray, and, though they currently allow you to bring in snacks, they may expand their food offerings in the future and limit outside foods, so check their web site before you go. My husband thinks it is amusing that a couple of lower beams have signs warning “Please Watch Your Head!,” a feat he deems impossible without a mirror. And that was before we had a drink.

As we sipped and chatted, we discussed the changeover at many wineries from cork to screw top. Screw tops have several advantages over corks, although, as our server explained to us, if you use a top end supplier, as many NoFo wineries do, they’re actually not all that much cheaper. However, there is less chance for a wine to become “corked,” among other problems. On the other hand, if you have a wine you want to age, aging happens more quickly with the breathability of a cork.

On the menu are three options: Library, of their highest end wines, $15 per taste or $20 for two; Estate, five of their middle label wines for $16; or Premium, five of their higher end wines for $20. Since Lenz is one of the older wineries on the North Fork, first established in 1978, they can label some wines “Old Vines” without exaggeration. Though many of their wines are reasonably priced, the price tags on some of the Library wines gave us pause. $125? Wow. I don’t know whether they’re worth that much, and I also haven’t tried them!

We opted for the Estate flight.

2014 Pinot Gris $25

We liked this French style expression of the grape, with its aromas of yeast and citrus and tastes of kumquat or mandarin orange. My tasting buddy said it has a creamy mouth feel.

2014 White Label Chardonnay $15

One reason we picked this flight was because the Premium flight featured an oaked chard, and though I have had oaked chards that were unobjectionable, in general I prefer steel fermented. This one is steel fermented, but has a small amount—about 5%–of oaked chard added “to soften” it. We liked this wine, too. The aroma includes lemon and a touch of cedar, and the taste is mildly lemony, like a Meyer lemon, plus a little pear. We are a bit short on whites in the cellar, so we decide to buy two bottles of this one.

We like that the labels are more informative than most.

2016 Blanc de Noir $24

This rosé is made from 100% pinot noir (hence the name, though I bet someone thought it was amusing to call this “white of black”), and is left on the skins for just three and a half hours. Again, this is a French style rosé, so quite dry, with the expected aroma of strawberries, though also quite minerally. Like a bunch of sliced strawberries without added sugar, perhaps early in the season before they get very sweet and fruity.

2014 Estate Selection Cabernet Sauvignon $35

Our server explains that they make the Estate Selection wines from the better vintages. This is a “typical Long Island cab,” she adds, “lighter, less tannic, fruit driven.” I’d agree. I really like the smell, which has lots of berry and cherry. It tastes like plums, and is pleasant, but rather monochromatic, I tell my husband, just as he turns to me and opines that it is “not complex.” So we are in agreement.

2014 Estate Selection Merlot $35

Although it is called merlot, our server informs us that it is 10-20% cabernet franc, malbec, and petit verdot. There’s a touch of the earthiness you find sometimes in NoFo merlots, which I don’t care for. Although the wine is not bad, I like it the least of the ones we’ve tasted. It does have that black cherry taste of merlot. I think it might do better if it ages a while longer. My husband says it “lacks gravitas,” one of his favorite phrases recently. I could see having it with lamb chops.

Reasons to visit: a good-sized tasting room whether you are with a group or just a couple, with an outdoor area for summer seating; small selection of gift items and local art for sale; the Pinot Gris and the White Label Chardonnay; they have some serious wines.

We admired the chalk drawings, and were told that a local woman, named Patty, does them, changing them with the seasons.

If you remember your Greek mythology, you will realize that the boat-shaped bar at Jason’s Vineyard is meant to evoke the famous ship, the Argo, on which the Argonauts, led by Jason, set out to find the Golden Fleece—not, as we once heard a guest guess, a pirate ship.

A view to the outdoor veranda and a portrait of Jason.

Jason was (he sadly died young, just a few years ago) a member of the Damianos family, whose other vineyards are Duck Walk and Pindar, which we reviewed recently. We decided to check out Jason’s and make it a trifecta. Having met and had a great chat with Jason, whom we ran into in a local store, back when he was planning to open this winery, we wanted to like it. Though we were pleased by some of the wines, overall we found some of the same issues as with the other Damianos family wines, a tendency to over-sweetness and simplicity.

The tasting room is of average size, but they also have a plastic-sheeted veranda and an outdoor seating area for larger crowds in the summer. The bar is surrounded by bar stools, so you can perch as you sip. We observed one group nibbling on food they had clearly brought with them, and there are also a few snack items for sale. In an outdoor enclosure we saw several sheep and alpacas, I suppose another reference to that famous fleece.

The menu offers five tastes for $15, and after some calculating we realized that we could do two tastings and try almost all of their wines. You pay in advance and get a little pile of black “coins,” which the server collects as she pours each new taste. The tastes, by the way, are quite generous, so that we found ourselves dumping those that didn’t delight with more frequency than usual. They also have Greenport Harbor beer on tap.

2015 Chardonnay $21.95

The aroma of this steel-fermented wine is rather typically chardonnay-ish, with plenty of lemon and tropical smells. The taste is also rather strong for a chard, and we decided it would go better with chicken than any sort of delicate seafood.

No that’s not water–our water glasses are in the back–that’s how light the sauvignon blanc is.

2017 Sauvignon Blanc $24.95

The first thing I noticed was the very light, almost watery color of the wine. That turned out to be predictive of the taste, which I described as wine-flavored water. Grassy aroma.

2017 Pinot Blanc $34.95

“Are they keeping the wine outside?” wondered my tasting buddy, as we tried to warm up the very cold glass so we could assess the wine. On the other hand, we liked this the best so far. Although the aroma is slightly chemical, the taste balances citrus with a sweeter fruitiness, perhaps guava. This is a white you could have with pork chops.

2015 White Riesling $24.95

Isn’t saying white riesling redundant, we asked our server, who chuckled and admitted she was equally baffled. In this case, the chem lab aroma led to a taste we did not care for. It was sweet, but with a bitter aftertaste, like honey being used to disguise medicine, as my mother used to do to give me aspirin when I was little.

Golden Fleece $18.95

Given the name, we were not surprised to hear her describe this as their “signature white.” It is a blend of chardonnay, seyval blanc, Cayuga, vidal blanc, and riesling. Though she didn’t have any information on the proportions, she said it was predominantly chardonnay. Having been forewarned that this was on the sweet side, we were pleasantly surprised to find that, although it did remind us of white grape juice mixed with tropical fruit and tangerines, it was not cloyingly sweet. However, we did dump most of this and the previous taste.

Two merlots.

2014 Merlot $27.99

Our server poured this along with an “extra” of a taste of the 2000 Merlot, which they are offering for just $12 a bottle. One sip and we knew why the low price—my husband described it as “if not over the hill, at least standing at the top and about to walk down.” It smelled like forest floor and machine oil and tasted smoky and thin. Which made the 2014 taste better. It’s a typical North Fork merlot, with dominant cherry tastes and light tannins. The extra, by the way, was not given to us because of the book, but according to the server is being given to everyone, so they are clearly looking to offload the 2000. We dumped our taste.

2013 Cabernet Sauvignon $27.95

We had hopes for this wine, as it smelled really good, of dark fruits, but the taste was very light, with no depth and not much fruit. Dump.

2015 Meritage $29.95

This is an unusual blend for a red, of cabernet, merlot, and chardonnay, aged 24 months in French oak. The aroma reminded me of Cheracol cough syrup, but the taste was not bad. My husband described it as “not sophisticated, but tasty.” A light red, it would be fine with pasta or, for a Greek meal, pastitsio.

2013 Malbec $29.95

We get some wet basement funkiness in the smell, but fortunately it tastes better than that. Though it is not complex, we get some nice dark fruits and light tannins. Dry and drinkable. We decide it could go with barbeque, but for this level of wine we’d rather head to Vintage, our local liquor store, for one of their $12 bottles.

2007 Dessert Wine $28.95

As we were deciding which wines to get, we hesitated between this and the rosé in order to total ten tastes. Our server, seeing what we liked, steered us to this one, telling us that the rosé was on the sweet side. This, of course, is sweet as well, comparable, she said to a port, with 19.5% alcohol, made from cabernet. A good drink for a cold day, she suggested. It does taste port-like, rather sweet, but, my husband opines, with no depth or gravitas. We try it with the heart-shaped chocolates that are in a bowl in front of us, which does improve the experience. I could see sipping this by the fire with a piece of chocolate cake. Or maybe just the cake…

We noted the nautical theme even at the entrance.

Reasons to visit: you like to visit the sheep and alpacas, though you are sternly warned not to feed them; very generous pour; you can bring your own snacks; the chardonnay, the Meritage, the malbec; the bar is cool; they also have the Absenthe, which we tried at Pindar.

To celebrate Groundhog Day, we decided to take a trip to Italy—or at least as close as you can get on the North Fork. We love the décor at Diliberto’s winery, where the trompe l’oeil effect of the murals reminds us of sitting in a café in a small Italian town’s main square, one of our favorite activities in Italy. The sounds of Italian opera or pop music and the video on the screen over the piano showing scenes of the Italian countryside add to the immersive effect, a nice antidote to the recent sub-zero wind chills we’ve experienced.

Note the sign on the “building”: Trattoria Diliberto.

In addition, the room was filled with the delicious scent of freshly made pizza, which every table but ours was enjoying. The kitchen is almost as big as the tasting room, and they have a pizza oven where they make thin crust pizzas as well as other Italian treats (no outside food allowed). The only problem with the pizzas was that I had trouble smelling the wines over its aroma.

The screen shows “Visions of Italy,” a series of flyovers of Italian cities and countryside, originally produced for PBS.

The tasting room is quite small, but in the summer they have a sizeable outside area, as well as a plastic-enclosed porch for mild days. No big groups allowed, and, most emphatically, no children. In the winter, they are only open on Saturdays and Sundays, but check their web page, since on some Sundays they feature “Sundays with Grandma,” which involves a four-course Italian meal and live music.

There are real roses on the tables, a classy touch.

The menu has five wines, and oddly offers three tastes for $16, or $6 per taste. Our server, who was simply a server, with not much to say about the wines, first asked if we wanted to do two $16 tastings, until we pointed out that there were only five wines. “Oops,” she said, “I forgot we don’t have the rosé any more.” So we paid $28 for our five tastes, which were delivered to our table all at once, in nice little round-bottomed glasses. She did come back to our table periodically to check on how we were liking the wines and offer us some water.

Our panoply of tastes–we had already taken a couple of sips of the chardonnay.

Now that the prognosticating groundhogs haven’t seen their shadows, perhaps soon we’ll be enjoying some warm, Italian-like weather.

2017 Chardonnay $32

This is a lightly oaked chardonnay, which spends five months in oak barrels, so it is not too butterscotchy. The taste reminds me of thyme honey, which is herbier than clover honey, plus a touch of lemon. Not bad, but not a style of chard I particularly like. My husband says he could see it as a summer sipper on the deck.

2017 Sauvignon Blanc $30

We like the pretty bright yellow color of this wine, which is steel fermented. It’s a pretty typical North Fork sauvignon blanc, with crisp green apple and lemongrass flavors, a good oyster wine. By the way, you may notice that the prices are a bit high here. My guess is that, as such a small winery, they lack the advantage of larger scale places, which can distribute the cost of winemaking over more bottles.

2014 Merlot $32

In general, I think Diliberto does better with his reds. This merlot is rather light, with lots of that typical cherry flavor and some tannins. It is served a bit too cold. According to the menu, it is aged just one year, in a mix of new and used French oak, which might account for why it seems so light. It seems not quite balanced to me, though it would be a fine wine to have with pizza, especially one made without tomato sauce.

2016 Cantina $30

A cantina is usually a bar, or an informal kind of restaurant, and this wine would go fine in such a place. A blend of 50/50 merlot and cabernet franc, it combines the cherry and pepper tastes of the two, with some hints of blackberry. Though it has more body than the merlot, I find the finish evanesces, though the menu says it has a “smooth, lingering finished” (sic—we used my pen to correct our copies). It’s another perfectly fine wine, and again would go well with pizza or pasta.

Even the labels are a nod to the Dilibertos’ Italian heritage.

2015 Tre $42

If I were ordering pizza and a glass of wine, this is the one I would get, even though it is $17 per glass. As you might guess from the name, this is a blend of three grapes: 65% merlot, 20% cabernet sauvignon, and 15% cabernet franc. It has a lovely dark color and an aroma of tobacco, spice, and candy. It tastes good, with cherry and dark chocolate flavors and enough tannins that I think it could age some more and be even better. It could even stand up to steak or lamb chops.

They also lead tours of Italy.

Reasons to visit: you like a small, intimate setting; you want to pretend you are in Italy; you like listening to opera while you sip; you appreciate a child-free setting; the Cantina and the Tre; you want a thin-crust pizza for lunch.

We thought it was safe, on this cold day in January, to go to Pindar for a quiet tasting. Nope. When we entered, a group of young women were having a wonderful but excruciatingly loud time at one end of the bar. However, we could see that they were almost done, so we stayed and prepaid (as requested) for two tastings. Halfway into the first five tastes, they left—only to be replaced by two bus loads! Our server apologetically explained that one group had arrived early for their reservation, while the other arrived late, hence the crowd of almost forty women around the bar.

Don’t let the serenity of this image fool you. Just off to the right there’s a noisy crowd at the bar.

We decided we could see why Pindar is popular with the limo group. The pour is generous, the bottles are reasonably priced, and most of the wines are easy to drink and rather on the sweet side. That is also true of the other wineries owned by the Damianos family: Duck Walk and Jason’s. Though the founder, referred to fondly by staff as “Dr. Dan,” has passed, clearly his legacy lives on.

The tasting room is large, with several oval bars plus a number of tables, at one of which two women were attempting to enjoy their glasses of wine and a game of Scrabble. We commiserated about the noise. By the way, if you need the restroom you need to walk out of the tasting room and across the outdoor porch to find it.

A tasting consists of five wines for $12, selected from a list of over two dozen wines. We chose our ten tastes with some help from the well-informed but sorely over-worked server. He clearly would have liked to hang with us and discuss what we did and did not like, but once the third group arrived, he had plenty of work on his hands. Not wanting to prolong the experience, we decided not to order a cheese tray, which consists of a cheese you choose from their cooler plus crackers for $10.

Looks like a fairly pedestrian selection of cheeses.

2017 Sauvignon Blanc $16.99

I generally think of North Fork sauvignon blancs as perfect matches for Peconic Bay oysters. This one had a promising aroma of Granny Smith apples and lemons, and an initial tart flavor, also of lemon and green apple. However, it ended a bit too sweet. We liked it enough to imagine drinking it as an aperitif on a hot day, or pairing it with New England clam chowder, but it lacked that minerality we like with oysters.

The pretty label has quite a story behind it.

2017 Viognier $21.99

Not that many NoFo wineries feature viognier, so we knew we wanted to try this one. The aroma was somewhat funky, and my tasting buddy compared it to wet cardboard. Fortunately, it tasted better than it smelled, though the taste was rather simple. “It tastes like white wine,” he declared. Ha ha. Basically, it has a sort of generic white wine taste, with some unripe peach flavor. The label is very pretty, a painting of flowers made by a quadriplegic patient of Dr. Dan. She made it by holding a brush in her mouth! Quite an achievement. Her art also adorns the Syrah.

Autumn Gold $12.99 (or $18.99 for a quart)

Our server explained that this blend of seyval blanc, Cayuga, and chardonnay is “like a pinot grigio.” That sounded good, since I like pinot grigios. However, I felt it mainly tasted like a typical North Fork steel-fermented chardonnay, with a combination of citrus and a touch of peach. Drinkable.

2017 Rosé $16.99

Made from pinot meunier grapes, this is a rather sweet rosé. It has the typical rosé aroma of strawberries, though in this case it reminded me of the smell of a bunch of strawberries macerating in sugar in preparation for being made into strawberry shortcake. The taste also reminded me of strawberry shortcake, cut with a touch of lemon.

I should have known that I wouldn’t like this one, based on the description. Oh well.

Spring Splendor $12.99

I was curious to try this because the menu describes it as “fermented with natural American cranberry.” It has a pretty pink color, tastes like a slightly alcoholic cranberry juice, and I suppose one could use it to make a wine-based cocktail. Too sweet. We dumped the rest of our taste.

This label reminds us of the 20s-inspired labels at Duck Walk.

2016 Gamay Noir $18.99

If you are out to dinner and one person orders fish or chicken and the other orders meat, but you want one bottle of wine, this would work. It is a very light red, like a less fruity Beaujolais. It is dry, with no tannins, and rather mono-dimensional. Drinkable.

Pythagoras $16.99

The name of this wine and the name of the winery are nods to the Damianos family’s Greek roots, in case you were wondering why a wine is named for that annoying theorem you had to memorize in high school geometry. This is their Bordeaux blend—cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec, and petit verdot. The fragrance reminds me of stewed prunes, and the taste also has some purple plum notes. The wine is dry, with soft tannins, and is good but not deep or complex. My husband says it is a “teeny tiny Bordeaux.”

Another pretty label, and our favorite wine of the day.

2015 Syrah $16.99

This one, as my grandma used to say with the birth of each grandchild, beats the bunch. Though our server apologetically explains that is it “not as bold or peppery” as some syrahs, we quite like it. I say it smells like blueberries, and my husband says blackberries. It tastes of those berries and plums, with nice tannins. It would go well with lamb—or, we decide, as we buy a bottle, with the eggplant parmesan I’m making for dinner.

2014 Cabernet Franc $18.99

I say it smells like “forest floor,” and my husband adds “auto repair shop.” Really? Then I sniff some more and get it: rubber, metal, some sort of chemical spray. Our server notes that he just opened the bottle, and it probably needed more time to breathe. (Given how many people he is serving at once, he could probably use some time to breathe as well!) It tastes pretty good, however. We get dark fruits, cherries, spice, and chocolate.

2014 Dr. Dan’s Signature Merlot $24.99

We get a new glass for this special wine, which is aged 32 months in French oak and made with grapes from 40-year-old vines. It smells delicious. It has the dark cherry taste of North Fork merlots, plus blackberry and a touch of vanilla. Though it is not complex, it is good. We decide overall we prefer the reds to the whites.

If you like raspberry soda, you might like this sparkler.

Raspberry Bubbly (sparkling wine) $21.99

No, this is not a special extra because of the book. The menu highlights it as a free taste. It is listed as “’méthode champenoise with raspberry dosage,” and, having noted our likes and dislikes, our server offers this somewhat apologetically. It tastes like raspberry soda, and one sip is enough for us. We leave the rest of the taste in the glass, thank our server, and go buy a bottle of the syrah.

We found this calico cat sunning herself on Pindar’s porch.

Reasons to visit: it is winter and you are hoping for a quiet tasting—but don’t count on it; the sauvignon blanc, the syrah, the cabernet franc, Dr. Dan’s Signature Merlot; they also serve you need a place that will accommodate a large group.

Not sure if you can read this, but this hand-written sign was at the entrance to the Pindar driveway.

“We’ll have to stop quacking,” joked my husband, as we finished our tasting at Duck Walk Vineyards’ North Fork tasting room. You see, the last time we went, in 2009, we disliked almost all the wines, including a red that tasted like ashes, and I had an allergic reaction (something I almost never have to Long Island wines, for some mysterious reason). So we vowed never to return, and amused ourselves by quacking derisively as we drove past. No more. Though we didn’t like all the wines, there were plenty we did enjoy, and we had a great tasting experience.

This tasting room is quite spacious, though the last time, when we came in the spring, we were in a different one that was even bigger.

Duck Walk, like Jason’s and Pindar, is owned by the Damianos family, and many of their wines are somewhat sweet for our taste, though numerous people like them. And it is a family affair, with even a third generation possibly getting ready to join the business, according to our chatty and well-informed server. It is always a plus to have a server who is really into the wines of the place where she works, and we appreciated our server’s enthusiasm for the wines and eagerness to share her preferences. She also was happy with our respectful approach to the wines, and gave us some extra tastes to show off the depth of their collection.

The tasting room we went into is to the right of the main entrance, where we had a tasting the last time, and is a smaller—though still quite large and airy—room. A long bar dominates one end, past which are French doors leading out to the vines. When we entered, a large group of young women were enjoying their tasting before heading back out to the limo, and the room became noticeably quiet when they left. In the summer, we have often seen whole fleets of limos and buses parked outside, as Duck Walk is a regular on the limo circuit (another reason we haven’t been back in a long time).

Wine and anacks for sale.

The bar includes Greenport beer on tap.

Aside from feeling it was finally time to go back, I also was intrigued to taste their Absenthe, their new after-dinner “traditional distilled spirit,” whose name echoes that of the famous Czech drink, absinthe.

Their website notes that they have snacks for sale, though we were not offered a menu, and they do allow you to bring in “light snacks.” It also says they are “pet friendly,” which I assume means in the summer, when you can sit outside.

A tasting consists of four tastes for $10, which you pay in advance. You then get four tickets, which the server collects after each drink. Since the menu includes seventeen red, white, and rosé wines, plus seven other drinks in the sparkling and dessert categories, we decided to do two tastings and share as we went along. Though you are free to choose any four, in any order, our server did give us the standard advice to drink whites before reds, and to follow the order of their listings on the menu.

2017 Chardonnay $16.95

Since chardonnay is so ubiquitous on the North Fork, I felt we should include it in our tasting. This is their steel-fermented chard, and at the moment they do not have an oaked chard, though our server says they have had one in the past. We agree that we both prefer steel to oak. This one has a bit of a barnyard smell, and is a touch too sweet for us. It has tastes of pineapple and guava with some minerality. My tasting buddy opines that it is “wine for the skittish,” by which he means it is easy to drink if you’re not a big wine drinker.

2017 Sauvignon Blanc $18.95

Nice. I get a cut grass smell which my husband describes as “woodsy,” plus some rock or mineral. The taste is fairly typical for North Fork sauvignon blancs, lemony and grapefruity, and would be fine with oysters.

When the labels do not feature ducks they feature Gastby-themed art, like this one of what the tasting room workers jokingly named the “Hamptons hooker.”

2017 Rosé $16.95

We admire its pretty pink color and Gatsby-inspired label, which features a young woman in flapper dress standing in front of a mansion and a 1920s car. Her provocative pose has led the winery workers to dub her the “Hamptons hooker.” Made from the pinot meunier grape, this has a slightly funky aroma, plus the expected strawberry. The taste reminds me of a vodka-infused watermelon I once sampled at a party (I was young.), with some sweet strawberry and lemon notes. This would be a fine summer sipper, though it is a bit too sweet for us.

Southampton White $14.95 for 750 ml, $18.95 for 1.5 l

According to the menu, this is made from the cayuga grape, which is often used upstate. As we feared, it is too sweet for us, while also being light and not complex. I contemplate dumping the rest of our taste.

2017 Pinot Meunier $29.95

Since Duck Walk is the only vineyard that grows this grape, we decide we need to start our tasting of the reds with this wine. My tasting pal and I agree that this smells like berries, though I say blueberry and he says raspberry. It is a light, fruity summer red, good with barbequed chicken. It reminds me of a Beaujolais. This label also features an upper-crust Gatsby-esque theme, with formally clad horse riders.

2016 Cabernet Sauvignon $18.95

This cab doesn’t have much aroma or taste. There is a slightly funky smell. The wine itself is light and dry, with some tannin. It would be okay with a burger, though I generally prefer beer with burgers.

Do you see the duck reference in this picture? I got it!

2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve $38.95

Power of the book strikes again! Our server, with whom we have been having enjoyable conversations about the North Fork vs. the South Fork (where she often has to travel to work in the South Fork tasting room in Water Mill), gives us an extra, a taste of the high-end cab sauv. And it is really good! Lots of dark fruit taste, the kind of tannins that make me think it could age even more, and some depth and interest.

2015 Merlot $16.95

Again, the aroma is a bit funky, plus the usual cherry smell. This is a dry, drinkable merlot, not overpowering at all. My husband says there’s “not a lot of stuff going on.” It’s a fairly typical North Fork merlot, with some cherry taste. It would be fine with pasta.

2014 Merlot Reserve $38.95

Once again, we get an extra. This time, a taste of the reserve merlot. The aroma is complex, with notes of plum, cherry, and tobacco (which my husband calls ash). However, the aroma promises more than the taste delivers, though this is a good, dry, drinkable red. Not a lot of tannins.

2015 Malbec $16.95

Although malbec is most often used as part of a mixture of grapes, I tend to enjoy it on its own as well. The color of this is a beautiful dark red, and the aroma is also dark, of dark fruits like plums. We like the taste, which is dry and tannic, with enough fruit that it would be fine to sip or have with steak.

The White Port is so new it wasn’t on the menu.

2010 White Port

I can’t tell you the price of this because it is not yet on the menu. Another extra treat! Duck Walk often features their blueberry port, which is actually made with blueberries, so this is a departure for them. The aroma is nutty, and it would actually taste good with nuts. I taste some gooseberry taste, (and then we decide that next summer when Briermere sells gooseberries we will have to buy them again). Nice after-dinner sipper.

If you like Sambuca you’ll like Absenthe.

Absenthe $29.95, $5 per taste

We happen to have a bottle of absinthe we hand imported from the Czech Republic a while ago, so as I tasted this Duck Walk version, I looked forward to comparing it to the historical drink. Supposedly, absinthe used to be made with wormwood and was highly addictive as well as causing hallucinations. That’s no longer the case, so it is safe to sip. In the Czech Republic there is a whole ceremony to drinking absinthe, involving mixing sugar and a bit of absinthe on a spoon, igniting it, and then, as the sugar liquifies, blowing out the flame (important step!) and pouring it into the glass. No sweetening is necessary with the Duck Walk Absenthe, which is quite sweet, almost syrupy, and tastes very strongly of black licorice. If you like Sambuca, you’ll like this. After I went home—and recovered from all that drinking!—I tried our absinthe. It is not at all sweet or syrupy, though it does have a licorice taste plus a beautiful green color, and is quite strong (70% alcohol).

Reasons to visit: it is winter, and you want to check out a winery that is too crowded in the summer; the Sauvignon Blanc, the Rosé, the Pinot Meunier, and the Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve; they allow dogs (outside) and snacks; pretty labels; reasonable prices; beer on tap in case you’re with someone who doesn’t want wine (why?).

All the leaves are gone from the vines, leaving the rows looking like lines of bent-legged dancers. For our first winery of the year, we decided to return to Clovis Point on a Friday afternoon. The tasting room was empty the entire time we were there, but on weekends, when they feature live music and artist talks, it is livelier.

Artist talks? Yes, every six weeks the winery invites an artist to come in and hang their works, setting aside one day when the artist can come in and talk to the people assembled there about the art. (Check their web site for times and performers.) We admired this week’s art, large photographs of natural scenery by Leonardo Vatkin, as we perused the menu.

The current art exhibit, which changes every six weeks, consists of photographs by Leonardo Vatkin.

The menu offers four options: Cold, $18 for four whites and a rosé; Red, $12 for three reds; Complete, $28 for all of Cold and Red combined; and Premium, three of their best reds (one is actually a port) for $5 per taste. We decided to share one Complete, which was plenty of wine for us both.

As we sipped and chatted, we also admired the roomy tasting room, still decorated with lights and poinsettias for the holidays. There’s also a large porch area off to one side, which is enclosed with plastic windows for the winter. They have a menu of snacks, which we only realized when our tasting was almost over and I happened to turn over the wine menu. Had our server pointed it out, we might have bought something. I was also surprised that she didn’t try to promote their wine club, which often happens when we reveal that we are locals.

2017 Sauvignon Blanc $29

This is a somewhat typical North Fork sauvignon blanc, which is not a bad thing. They say you should drink local wines with local foods, and this would go perfectly with a plate of Peconic Bay oysters. With aromas of minerals and rocks and tastes of green apple, lemon/lime, and minerals, this is a pleasantly refreshing white.

2015 Chardonnay $25

Although this is simply called chardonnay, it has 3% gewürztraminer, which adds a note of complexity. Steel fermented, it has a lemon drop candy aroma with a touch of funkiness. The taste also has some citrus, plus lots of pineapple and a bit of nutmeg. They recommend pairing it with melted brie. Sounds good to me. A popular party snack used to be melted brie coated with sliced almonds. Hmmm…

The image on the labels is of a clovis point.

This explains the clovis point.

2016 Black Label Chardonnay $28

Although this is partially oaked, it is only 30% French oak fermented, so it is not too oaky. It smells like thyme honey, with a touch of something vegetal, plus some butterscotch. I think it would taste better with food, but my tasting buddy comments on its “freshness.” We like its combination of lemon zest and just a touch of butter. By the way, in a classy touch, our server rinses our glass with a bit of each new wine, so as not to contaminate the taste with the previous one.

Our line-up so far.

2017 Barrel Fermented Chardonnay $35

Oh, guess what, this is barrel fermented (I miss one closed winery’s creative nomenclature.). Although the aroma is VERY butterscotchy, the taste is not as buttery as I had feared. Instead, it is a comparatively light oaked chard, with tastes of honey and pineapple, balanced with citrus. Roast chicken with gravy, is what I’m thinking.

2017 Rosé $22.50

Made from 100% cabernet franc, this has a strong aroma of strawberry shortcake. My husband jokes that the smell is “presumptuous.” However, the taste is not super fruity. In fact, we agree that blindfolded, not seeing the pretty light pink color, you might not guess this is a rosé. It does finish with that characteristic strawberry taste, after initial impressions of minerality and citrus. I often like to pair rosés with Chinese food, but I think this would go better with charcuterie.

2014 Merlot $29

Now we get a fresh glass for the reds, starting with a wine listed simply as merlot, but which is 85% merlot, plus 8% cabernet franc, 2% syrah, 2% malbec, 2% petit verdot, and 1% cabernet sauvignon. The first thing that strikes me about this wine is the aroma, which is so strongly perfumed that I might be tempted to dab it behind my ears. Instead, we sip, and discover, in addition to the expected cherry taste, lots of tannins. Although this is already four years old, I think it might need more aging. The tasting notes assert it has an “unforgettable velvety finish.” We agree that “velvety” is not a word we would choose.

2015 Cabernet Franc $35

Again, this is a bit of a blend, 96% cabernet franc, 3% cabernet sauvignon, and 1% petit verdot. We sniff and get blueberries and a funky forest floor, mossy smell. The taste is pleasant, with, in contrast to the merlot, not a lot of tannins, and tastes of purple plums and other fruit. Though it is not complex or deep, it is good, and could go with a steak or lamb chops.

Note the small battle, which makes this a rather expensive wine.

2015 Syrah $34 for 500 ML (a small bottle)

88% syrah, 10% merlot, and 2% cabernet sauvignon. Our server explains that this comes in a small bottle because they “don’t grow much” syrah. My tasting pal jokes that it “tastes like wine,” but I get what he means. It has sort of a generic red wine taste, with some tannins and a hint of pepper at the end. The aroma is a bit funky, with some pine. Though again not deep, it is good, and would go well with short ribs or other fatty meats. After this, the server asks if we want to buy a taste of any of the premium wines, but we decline, and decide, though we liked everything, not to buy any. Like many small wineries (they only have ten acres, and buy some grapes from other North Fork vineyards), they lack economy of scale, so their prices are a bit high for what you get. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, more consolidation of wineries happens.

Reasons to visit: pleasant tasting room; live music many weekends plus art shows; good wines, especially the sauvignon blanc, the Black Label Chardonnay, the merlot; if I were to get a glass to sip during a performance, I would get the cabernet franc, which is very drinkable on its own.

You really need to have two flights to begin to sample the breadth of Osprey’s Dominion’s list of wines, so…we did. I valiantly offered to drink more of each taste than my husband, the designated driver. A flight of five tastes is $12, so we did one with five whites and another of five reds, but we could go back and do another two tastings of all different wines, if you include the “Reserve Collection.”

On this pre-Christmas Saturday of frantic last-minute shopping (we did a few errands in Riverhead and were happy we did them early, as we saw the traffic quickly increasing), the expansive tasting room at Osprey’s was an oasis of calm. We had useful attention from our server, who quickly noted our likes and helped us tailor our tasting accordingly, avoiding their sweeter wines.

Gift items

Interesting way to use corks

This is called “North Fork Skyline”!

What’s nice about Osprey is it has something for everyone, from the lower priced Richmond Creek wines to the expensive Reserves, from the sweet Regina Maris Chardonnay to the minerally Sauvignon Blanc. They also carry a nice selection of wine-related gifts. The one area I would fault them on is in the snack category. After our morning of erranding I was ready for a snack, but the “cheese tray” on offer for $10 was a cellophane-wrapped very small package of a few slices of Boar’s Head salami and cheese, plus a little baggie of crackers. No thanks.

That Boar’s Head “cheese tray” was quite inadequate.

Nice sized pour

2016 Sauvignon Blanc $19

Both the aroma and the taste of this sauvignon blanc are complex and interesting, and somewhat different than the usual North Fork s.b. We sniff and get something funky, something vegetal—maybe cabbage? The taste has lots of minerality and salt, plus pink grapefruit. Good. The tasting menu says “refreshing acidity.” I would agree. My husband says it is “not shy.” Some day it might be fun to line up a bunch of different sauvignon blancs and see how they differ.

2014 Fumé Blanc $19

Well, here’s one way they can differ. This wine uses the same grape, but aged in 15% new French oak, on the lies for a while, for a somewhat smoky taste. The aroma is again a bit funky, but also smells like ripe melon. It has a richer mouth feel than the first wine and a nice long finish. Lots of good acidity. We like this one, too.

2017 Reserve Pinot Gris $24

Our server steers us to this one, instead of our original plan of just going in order on the list of whites, since we had said we did not care for sweet wines. The aroma of this one lets me trot out my new vocabulary word: petrichor. That’s the “scent of rain on dry ground,” which is also the smell you get when you walk past apartment buildings in New York in the summer after the doorman has been hosing down the sidewalk, or the smell of this wine. It tastes like tangerines and pineapple, plus again some minerality, and is another winner.

2014 Reserve Chardonnay $22

Although our server says this is the least sweet and least oaky of the oaked chardonnays, it’s not my favorite of the wines so far. 100% barrel fermented, the aroma is of something floral plus pencil shavings. My tasting buddy identifies a “theme” in the wines, which we decide is a combination of minerality and acidity. Those qualities help balance the sweetness of this chard. I could see having it with Chinese food.

2013 Gewürztraminer $19

As is typical of this grape, we get lots of floral smells, like honeysuckle, plus spice. “It smells like a garden,” says my husband. Though we prefer the gewürztraminer at One Woman, this is nice, with some gingery notes as well as fruit. A touch sweet.

Richmond Creek Red Blend $14

Now we get a fresh glass for the reds. This is a left bank Bordeaux blend of 42% cabernet sauvignon, 11% pinot noir, 26% cabernet franc, and 23% merlot. As I sniff, I’m reminded of a gift I once got of a box of chocolate covered cherries. Add to that a touch of tobacco and you have the aroma of this mellow, smooth, and very drinkable red. It tastes remarkably like those chocolate covered cherries, too. Really good for the money, and we’ve often bought it at Vintage, our local liquor store.

2013 Meritage “Flight” $30

I love this kind of juxtaposition. Here’s another Bordeaux-style blend, this time of merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and petit verdot. At twice the price of the Richmond Creek blend, is it worth it? Well, maybe. It is definitely better in that it is more complex, with aromas and flavors of prunes, fruit, raspberries, and tobacco, with tannins that indicate you could probably cellar it for a few years. I wouldn’t buy it for every night drinking, but maybe for a special occasion. The word “flight,” by the way, refers to the owner, who is a pilot.

2014 Carménère $30

According to the tasting notes, Osprey is the first winery on Long Island to plant the Carménère grape, another grape used in Bordeaux wines. We like this wine, too. We smell pencil shavings again, like the smell you get from a pencil sharpener, and taste purple plums and spice, perhaps nutmeg. It has “lots of taste,” we agree. I think this is another wine that could age.

2014 Malbec $30

In Cahors, we are told by the tasting notes, malbec is blended with merlot and tannat grapes, as is the case here as well. The notes also recommend serving this with a grilled steak, and I can see that. The aroma reminds me of picking blueberries and blackberries at Patty’s Berries and Bunches in August, an activity I heartily recommend for small children. I had fun doing that, too. This wine is also enjoyable, juicy and yummy.

2013 Reserve Petit Verdot $30

The server and I agree that we like petit verdot. This one is very good, with aromas of nutmeg and other spices, and a long finish. It tastes like blackberry jam with seeds, and is very tannic. If I were adding wine to my cellar for aging, I would get this one.

The tasting room is quite roomy.

This is a secondary bar.

Reasons to visit: something for everyone, with a wide variety of wines at various price points and tastes; large attractive tasting room, where they often have music and other events; most of the wines, especially the Sauvignon Blanc, the Reserve Pinot Gris, the Richmond Creek Red Blend, the Meritage “Flight,” the Carménère, the Malbec, and the Reserve Petit Verdot. However, don’t rely on them for snacks.

I recently picked up a postcard with a map of North Fork wineries which labeled them as either “petit” or “grand” wine houses. Peconic Cellar Door is definitely one of the most petit of the petit places, a sliver of a storefront with room for a couple of tables and a narrow bar with four stools. A sign on the door warns that they will not accept groups of more than six, adding, “Sorry, arriving in more than one car doesn’t count as separate groups.” I suppose what you could do is have one part of your group go to the Winemaker Studio, which is right next door, connected to Cellar Door by an open doorway.

That’s not a bad idea, actually, since both tasting rooms offer similarly intimate experiences, and the ability to taste some interesting boutique wines. Peconic Cellar Door is something different on the North Fork, as it is one of the few wineries owned and run by women (One Woman is the only other one I can think of, since Comtesse Therese closed a few years ago.). In fact, if you go on their web page and click on “Meet the Cru,” you might notice that the entire crew is female.

When we entered on a chilly Friday afternoon, we were warmly greeted by Robin Epperson-McCarthy, who remembered that we’d been there before (a year ago), and introduced us to her charming three-year-old daughter, who soon left in the arms of her baby-sitter. No one else was there, so we had a lovely time chatting with Robin and exchanging bits of wine country gossip as well as in-depth discussions of the wines.

This is literally half the room.

She and her partner, Alie Shaper, have four different labels between them: Saltbird Cellars, Brooklyn Oenology, As If, and Haywater Cove. Alie is gradually transitioning her label to almost all Haywater Cove, a reference to a place on the North Fork, though she will continue to make a couple of her most popular Brooklyn Oenology (BOE) wines. Robin explained that they don’t have a reserve label, so the As If line functions somewhat like that. And Saltbird is Robin’s label, named for the sea birds she loves.

There are twenty-five (!) wines on the menu, plus a new sparkling wine that isn’t even there yet, but they offer a “Winemaker’s Flight” of five wines for $18, highlighted on the menu in blue ink, so we decided to go with those choices. However, the first item on the menu, a keg wine called Fizzi Rosé, was not available, so Robin instead gave us a taste of the newest As If wine, Gratitude, which is also a sparkler.

The name of this wine is, among other things, an homage to Alie’s mother, who died last year.

2018 As If Gratitude $28

This is a petillant naturel, which goes through some of its fermentation in the bottle and is sealed with a bottle cap. Interestingly, it is made from gewürztraminer grapes, which I don’t recall ever seeing before, which are fermented into an orange wine before it becomes a bubbly. The color is a cloudy yellow with a slight orange tint. It has a sweetish aroma, like flowers, but also something like pickle juice. It’s a light, refreshing, sparkler, which, we agree with Robin, would go well with charcuterie.

Saltbird Chardonnay and its creator.

2017 Saltbird Chardonnay $20

I discuss with Robin my—and her—preference for steel-fermented chardonnays, and she tells how she has served this wine to people who think they don’t like chardonnay, not realizing that what they don’t like is an oaked chard. They like her Saltbird chard. I smell gooseberries and lots of minerality, plus some citrus. She explains that part of the fermentation happens “sur lies,” which means on the dead yeast or bits of grape particles, which adds some depth to the taste. It is very dry, and has plenty of mineral taste. I think it needs food, like something in a cream sauce.

2016 As If Courage Rosé $28

Alie named her wines Serendipity, Courage, Persistence, and Gratitude to chart her progression in the wine business—the way serendipity led her into winemaking as a career, the courage it took to continue, the persistence it took to stick with it, and the gratitude she feels for being able to do this. It takes no courage to drink this French-style rosé, a dry pink wine with tastes and aromas of strawberries and minerals. Like most North Fork rosés, this is a good summer wine, and would go well with a salade niçoise or some nice Catapano goat cheese.

Now that’s orange!

This is the art on the BOE label. Can’t tell what it is? Neither could we. Apparently, it’s a box.

BOE 2014 Broken Land $30

As we learned the last time we were there, broken land is a reference to the original Dutch meaning of Brooklyn. This is an orange wine, made with gewürztraminer grapes from the Finger Lakes region. It sits on the skins for ten days, Robin tells us, which gives it that lovely orange color. I wonder whether it is the color that makes me think it tastes like blood oranges, but Robin assures me that she tastes orange too, though she thinks of tangerines. The label, like all BOE wines, features a work of art by a Brooklyn artist. This one is a representation of a box.

For the red we switched to this elegant glass.

Saltbird Cellars 2016 Harbinger Red Blend $36

A blend of 80% merlot and 20% cabernet sauvignon, this has the cherry aroma and flavor we have come to expect of North Fork merlots, somewhat ameliorated by the cabernet sauvignon. It’s a light, bright red which Robin says benefits from a bit of aeration.

Reasons to visit: an intimate setting in which to taste some nice wines and chat with the winemakers; the Broken Land orange wine (we buy a bottle), the Gratitude sparkling wine; it’s right next door to the Winemaker Studio, so you can do two tasting in one stop. The tasting room is on Peconic Lane, so you could do a winery walking tour by adding on Sannino Bella Vita (which may be moving in the future), ending in the Greenport Brewing Company restaurant on the corner for lunch or a snack and a sampling of excellent brews.

As you enter Coffee Pot Cellars’ cozy tasting room, you will be greeted by Beasley, Laura Klahre’s adorable, friendly, and tiny black pug dog. The day we went, Beasley was sporting a set of monarch butterfly wings, to help promote their merlot to monarch campaign. For every bottle of merlot they sell, they will, with the cooperation of the Girl Scouts of America, plant a milkweed seed. Milkweed, though deemed a weed by most people, is crucial for the survival of the monarch butterfly, whose caterpillars will only feed on it in their early lives. So of course before we left we had to buy a couple of bottles of merlot, bringing the running tally on the blackboard to 731 bottles sold.

Beasley sporting his monarch butterfly wings.

Laura, who is also a beekeeper and lover of nature, was pleased. She and her husband Adam Suprenant own Coffee Pot Cellars, a tiny winery named for the distinctive lighthouse out near Orient Point. She also runs Blossom Meadow Farm, where she not only makes honey, but also makes various beeswax products, such as candles, and promotes the usefulness to pollination of carpenter bees. If you would like to host some carpenter bees on your property, you can buy bee houses for them from Laura. We bought a little jar of her newest product, a raspberry jam.

In addition to a line-up of very good wines, Coffee Pot has an asset in the person of Laura, who is friendly and talkative, full of stories about bees and wine and Beasley. If you happen to go there the weekend of December 8-9, you will be in time for the celebration of Beasley’s twelfth birthday, which will be marked by the release of their 2015 Beasley’s Blend—of which we had a preview. And if you have ever been there before, Laura will remember you and greet you like an old friend.

The menu features six tastes for $12, but as long as they still have the Cyser (about which more in a moment), Laura will pour you seven tastes, so you don’t have to make any decisions.

The Cyser is a sparkling hard cider made with honey, and it’s quite yummy.

Cyser $19.99

Hard cider is made with sugar, and is often too sweet for me. Mead is made with fermented honey, and can be sweet as well, but this cyser is hard cider made with Blossom Meadow honey, and the Coffee Pot version is delicious—dry and sparkling, made with the méthode champenoise, hand disgorged by Adam. Laura informed us and another couple at the bar that it was made with 50% Liberty apples, 25% Black Twig, 10% Granny Smith, and 15% Crisp Golden, all from the local Breeze Hill Farm. It tastes like a slightly apple-flavored champagne, and would be lovely with charcuterie.

2014 Sauvignon Blanc $21.99

We already miss summer, so perhaps that’s why we envisioned sipping this wine with a summery salad dinner, perhaps salade niçoise. It is fruitier than many North Fork sauvignon blancs, with an aroma of minerals and honeysuckle. Good.

Though the chardonnay is oaked, it is so lightly done so that I like it.

2014 Chardonnay $19.99

As she rinses our glass with a bit of the next taste, Laura informs us that this wine was fermented in thirteen-year-old oak barrels. I’m happy, because I don’t generally care for oaked chardonnays, but when they are fermented in old—called neutral—oak, the taste is different from a steel-fermented chard, but not buttery. There is s slight taste of the oak, but I mostly taste and smell apples and tropical fruits, with some nice acidity. It would go well with fish tacos, which I am making for dinner tonight with locally caught cod.

2014 Gewürztraminer $21.99

Although this is just called gewürztraminer, it is also 12% riesling. The aroma is quite flowery. I taste lychees and pineapple, but it is a bit too sweet for me. However, it would go well with spicy food.

If you buy a bottle of merlot, you will also be helping the monarch butterflies!

2012 Merlot $19.99

Now we get a new glass for the reds. The famous merlot-for-monarchs merlot is aged eighteen months in French oak, and we smell cherries and spice and smoke. It’s a light, dry red, a Friday-night-hamburger wine, suggests Laura. We agree, liking the hint of spiciness which balances the cherry taste.

Note the portrait of Beasley, standing guard on the lighthouse. Watch out, he might lick you to death!

2015 Beasley’s Blend $23.99

All the labels show the Coffee Pot lighthouse, but this one also shows Beasley standing guard on the upper level of the lighthouse. Though it will be officially released next weekend for Beasley’s birthday, Laura gave us a preview taste. It’s a blend of 60% cabernet franc and 40% merlot, and we can smell the cherry of the merlot when we take a whiff. We taste dark fruit—cherries, plums—and nutmeg. A soft, dry red with nice tannins, this would be drinkable on its own. Good work, Beasley!

2014 Meritage $27.99

Another blend, this one is a Bordeaux-style 56% merlot, 23% petit verdot, 14% cabernet franc, and 7% cabernet sauvignon, and it’s also really good, though given the tannins I think it would be better in a few years. It is fairly complex, with layers of flavor, including that merlot cherry flavor plus blackberries and spices, and would stand up to steak or lamb chops.

They have some little tables for two on the porch, in case you come in the summer.

Reasons to visit: Laura and Beasley; the chance to taste some lovely wines, especially the Cyser, the sauvignon blanc, the Beasley’s Blend, and the Meritage; all sorts of interesting gift items you won’t find other places, like the carpenter bee houses, beeswax candles and other products; the opportunity to support monarch butterflies by buying the merlot; and I haven’t even mention the “winasaur” they’re building from used corks on the front lawn (Laura says when it’s done she’s going to make herself a dress from corks!).

After spending an afternoon with Beasley, it seemed appropriate that on the way home we saw the solar phenomenon known as a sun dog!